The embodiments described herein relate generally to media feeding systems and more specifically to systems and methods for feeding variable size media to a printer.
Certain printers are known that have several delivery paper feed paths for feeding paper into a print engine feed path. For example, certain printers have a paper source under the horizontal print engine such that paper is pulled from the source tray and curled around the back of the printer and then fed into the horizontal print engine feed path. Some printers utilize more than one paper tray in order to accommodate different paper sizes. Such a design minimizes the amount of area of a surface required for the footprint at the expense of using more space in a vertical direction. Conventional printers often provide a paper feed bypass tray that provides paper at a close to horizontal feed path to the print engine feed path. A bypass feed path does not necessarily have to be horizontal to the print engine feed path. An inkjet printer has a generally small print engine band that requires the paper be parallel to the print head. An example of a description of a printing feed mechanism that incorporates a horizontal envelope feeder is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,733,310 issued Mar. 22, 1988 to Kapp, et al.
As can be appreciated, conventional paper trays feed paper from the top of the stack of paper and must be removed from the printer in order to feed additional paper into the tray.
In one embodiment, a media feeder includes a propulsion source and singulator to feed single media items from a stack.
In another embodiment, the media feeder includes a power source, receives a feeder control signal and feeds media from the bottom of a stack.
In another embodiment, the media feeder includes at least two media sources and a control mechanism to control which source to utilize for a subsequent feed.